A summary of Mark A. Noll's The Civil War as a
Theological Crisis

In the first decades of the existence of the Unites States, leading to
the War of 1861, evangelical Christianity had largely imbued the nation's
citizenry with a sense that they were being guided providentially on a path
that would enable the country to usher in the Kingdom of God. With
The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, Mark A. Noll
describes the problems that were growing within this national understanding
as the war approached and then broke. He also hints at how this crisis may
have fundamentally changed religious attitudes throughout the
country.

Noll is sensitive to the convictions held by the different religious
leaders. He strives to convey a clear and meaningful perspective on the
various religious ideologies that developed within the sections, in order to
derive a strong understanding of the nature of their conflicts.
Unsurprisingly, the book provides a useful discussion of the religious
arguments over the morality of slavery itself. Interestingly, the book adds
to this with a discussion of other contemporary moral arguments, including
conflicts over the problem of racism; issues with the country's economic
systems; and, looking back on the war, an intensifying misapprehension about
the providence of the battle itself. During the war, uncompromising
attitudes about the fundamental morality of slavery overshadowed other
concerns, which led many of them to be largely orphaned.

In the end, Noll helps us to see that the literal interpretation of
the Bible most readily aided the South in defending slavery; this pushed
some elements in the North to move away from reliance on the Bible for moral
support, and, after the North defeated the South, led a shift toward
emphasizing a less public, less activist faith than had existed prior to the
war. This may shed some light on the combination of publically secular and
privately pious culture that pervades today.

Reference

MarkA.Noll. The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. The University of North Carolina Press, 2006.